“Every year, I have the same thought,” he said. “It's either going to be great, or I'm going to be run out of town on a rail.”

He's not terribly worried about the rail option.

“There are going to be so many interesting things,” he said. “There are going to be things you'll like or dislike, but at least it will start conversations about the place where art and technology meet and other things.”

Rosen has been heavily involved with the annual downtown arts blowout since its first outing in 2006, and this is his second year as artistic director. It will also be the first time that the footprint won't change: Once again, it will fill all of HemisFair Park, from the archway at Alamo Street all the way back to the Institute of Texan Cultures.

The event runs from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. Saturday.

As in the past, Luminaria will offer light-themed works by dozens of artists of all stripes. The biggest change this time around was in the selection process. In the past, the job was done by committees of local artists and arts administrators. This year, for the first time, they were chosen by outside adjudicators, allowing San Antonio artists some broader exposure for their work.

“To have somebody from outside give that external validation, it's something that I think is kind of lacking in San Antonio,” said Erik Bosse, a filmmaker who has also been involved with Luminaria since the beginning. “You were selected, not just by your peers who happen to be your friends, but people from outside that work in the same field.”

They reviewed just over 200 proposals, ultimately selecting about 90. That's down from last year's lineup of about 150 projects. Reducing the number of artists was part of the overall design.

More Information

LUMINARIA

• Where: HemisFair Park

• When: The children’s art areas at Magik Theatre and at Institute of Texan Cultures open at 5 p.m. Saturday; the opening ceremony is at 6:45 p.m. at the Alamo Street entrance to the park. Closing ceremony, including the ascension of dozens of lanterns, is around midnight at the Institute of Texan Cultures.

• Cost: Admission is free.

• Food: There will be food trucks in the park.

• Getting there: Park & Ride will be available this year. Parking is available at the Crossroads Park & Ride, 6916 I-10 West, and the Madla Transit Center, 1584 Cantrell; the buses will drop off riders at the Alamodome, which is a few blocks from HemisFair Park. The cost is $2.50 each way for adults and $2.50 roundtrip for children, senior citizens, Medicare recipients and students. The service is free for children younger than 5 and VIAtrans customers.

“We wanted to keep it under 100,” Rosen said, which should give people time to really experience the work without going into sensory overload.

There are a few other changes, too:

This will be the first year that VIA will offer Park & Ride service for the event.

Rackspace Hosting, in it second year as a major sponsor for the event, is building a mobile website that will include information about contributing artists, a map and a guide to help visitors find their way to the kinds of work they want to see.

Signs identifying the artists will be bigger.

An effort has been made to make Luminaria more accessible to cyclists, with several bike caddies around the park. In addition, rental bikes will be available at parking garages and other locations downtown and in King William. Details will be posted on the Luminaria website.

There will be two children's art areas — one outside Magik Theatre, the other by the Institute of Texan Cultures — that will get fired up at 5 p.m.

One thing that remains unchanged is the commitment to the event as a showcase for San Antonio artists. Although proposals were accepted from outside San Antonio, more than 90 percent of those who got the nod are locals.

The imports include Austin-based Invincible Czars, making their second Luminaria appearance. The band is known partly for writing and playing original scores for silent films; this year, they'll play behind “Martyrs of the Alamo,” a 1915 take on the siege that was produced by film pioneer D.W. Griffith.

“We followed a Latin band that was really good. When we started, the audience thinned out — we weren't the same thing, we weren't there to make them dance,” band member Josh Robins said.

They did, however, have a small group of folks who stayed to see the whole thing — quite a testament, given the amount of work competing for attention.

“A hundred feet from us was some other art installation that somebody else could have gotten distracted by,” Robins said.

This year, there was a hard press for artists to collaborate with one another rather than focus on solo work. Organizers even offered to play match-maker, helping connect artists with one another.

“It's riskier when you do that kind of stuff,” Rosen said. “But why do it if you can't take risks?”

Collaborations include “Illuminations,” in which poet Zoya Marincheva and visual artist Leslie Kell are working with filmmakers to put their work together; band Nada Mas Basura will play while the Scarlet Darlings burlesque troupe, covered with glow paint, will dance; and visual artist Gary Sweeney is joining forces with concept art band Hyperbubble for an interactive piece.

That collaborative spirit will also be illustrated in “Art Is Luminaria,” a film about artists at work created by director Ya'Ke Smith specifically for the event. It will move across six screens at the entrance to the park.

“One (segment is) about ballet, one is about music; there's another one about painting, another one about a film director directing,” Smith said. “And so basically it's all these artistic fields on screen. ... All the screens will interact with one another.”

Smith, a Sam Houston High School alum now based in Fort Worth, has won a slew of awards for his short films. His first full-length work, the big-buzz drama “Wolf,” will premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin the day after Luminaria.

When he was approached to do the piece, it took him a while to say yes because he couldn't quite figure out how to do it. The idea behind the film began to take shape when his wife and frequent collaborator, Mikala Gibson, offered to write a spoken word piece that would bind the whole thing together,

Weiss, who judged the media arts category and helped bring Smith into the Luminaria fold, said it should kick things off well.

“It really gets you in the mood to enjoy the rest of this thing,” Weiss said. “It's really beautiful.”

Weiss said he was impressed by many of the proposals he looked at, and is looking forward to seeing how it all turns out on Saturday.

“I'm kind of jealous that Dallas has not done something like this as well as San Antonio,” he said.